Saudi Sees No bin Laden-Iraq Link
November 22, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 21 —
Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief
said today that his government had seen no
evidence that the Iraqi government had
provided support to Osama bin Laden's Al
Qaeda network. He said Saudi Arabia would
not support making Iraq a military target of
the war on terrorism.
The official, Prince Turki bin Faisal, said that
his country regarded the Iraqi leader, Saddam
Hussein, as one of the world's most active
terrorists. But he said the best way to topple
him would be a coup carried out inside Iraq,
and that the United States and its allies should
avoid further military strikes in the region.
The warning by Prince Turki was the most
explicit yet in what appears to be a growing
effort by Arab governments to head off what
many in the region suspect may be the next
phase in the American-led war: making a
target of Iraq as a supporter of terrorism,
particularly if it can be linked to the Al Qaeda
network.
"You target Saddam Hussein and no one will
boo or hiss or object," Prince Turki said in a 90-minute interview here. "But
bombings like the ones we saw against Iraq in 1998, or like the ones we've
seen now in Afghanistan, with so-called collateral bombings, when bombs hit
innocent people, will have strong resonance and very bad implications for
relations with the West."
Prince Turki, 56, stepped down from his post in late August in what he said
today was a voluntary departure. But as Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief for
25 years, he speaks with enormous weight, particularly about matters related
to Mr. bin Laden, the son of a prominent Saudi family who was stripped of his
citizenship in 1994 and has become the kingdom's public enemy No. 1.
Prince Turki said he had no explanation for reports from Czech officials that
Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks, had met earlier
this year in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official.
But he said that his country's voluminous files on Mr. bin Laden contained no
evidence of any link to the Iraqi government, and he said he was concerned
that Americans eager to punish their foe in Baghdad might draw a connection
where there was none.
"Iraq doesn't come very high in the estimation of Osama bin Laden," Prince
Turki said. "He thinks of him as an apostate, an infidel, or someone who is not
worthy of being a fellow Muslim.
"If there is anything on the table implicating Arab countries it should be brought
out, and not brought out through newspaper leaks quoting between quotation
marks U.S. officials, or intelligence or State Department or defense officials."
Saudi reservations about the use of military force against Iraq are not new. In
1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saudi officials agonized for days before
permitting American and other foreign forces to enter the kingdom, first as a
defensive force and then as the army of more than 500,000 troops that
ultimately forced the Iraqi withdrawal.
More recently, while allowing American warplanes to patrol Iraqi skies from a
base in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis have refused to let those aircraft take part in
airstrikes against Iraqi targets, even in self- defense. Such raids are typically
carried out from Navy aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf or by warplanes
from other bases in the region.
Even in the current campaign in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia has limited its
military contribution to allowing American commanders to coordinate the
operation from Prince Sultan Air Base, about 60 miles southeast of Riyadh. In
the knowledge that the answer would be no, American officials never even
asked Saudi officials to allow the use of more than 100 United States
warplanes at the base.
Asked whether there was any chance that Saudi Arabia would allow the
United States to use those warplanes in a strike against Iraq as part of the war
on terrorism, Prince Turki said today: "Absolutely not.
"We've seen in the past what American attacks have done in Iraq," Prince
Turki said. "You remember during President Clinton's time in 1998, two weeks
of attacks, to destroy Saddam's air defense structure and his communications,
and in our view the result of those attacks was merely to bolster Saddam's
position in Iraq and make the people more supportive of him.
"Not only that, it also gained him support in the Arab world, not because he is
Saddam Hussein and people admire him, but because they saw these attacks
as being aggression against Iraq."
There are some within the Bush administration who advocate using the war on
terrorism to increase pressure on the Iraqi regime, perhaps through zones in
southern and northern Iraq in which forces opposed to Mr. Hussein would be
given sanctuary by American troops.
But Prince Turki argued that it would be a mistake for American forces to
become involved in Iraq. He said his government believed that Mr. Hussein
could be toppled, but that the Iraqi military officers and others most capable of
doing so had no interest in anything more than limited outside help. Over the
past decade, Prince Turki said, he and other senior Saudi officials had
"countless times" sought American support for what he portrayed as a
workable approach to ousting the Iraqi leader, in which the only American role
would be to prevent Iraq from using its air forces against its opponents.
"We've always proposed to your country that there are ways of getting rid of
Saddam," Prince Turki said. "There is no lack of Iraqis who are willing to do
that, many of them in the armed forces.
"They have two conditions. One condition is that once they start an operation,
Saddam is denied the use of air power against them. And the second condition
is that once they start an operation, that no outside interference is allowed.
And from 1990 until today, we've been saying that to your people, without any
response."
Some Saudi officials have expressed skepticism about what American officials
say is solid evidence that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks were
Saudi citizens. But Prince Turki made no effort today to question that claim,
and said that the participation of so many Saudis was "the most disturbing and
the most painful" aspect of what happened.
"We can look at ourselves and say my goodness these are people who grew
up here, who went to school here, who have families here, and look at what
they have done. Of course, there is a need for introspection. Let us see where
we went wrong," he said.
"But I can tell you this. We will find an answer. It is in the tradition and the
heritage of this kingdom to always find answers, and to carry on from there."
nytimes.com. |
